Last year, we were the #3 pass D in terms of yards, and this year we are dead last. That's a huge drop-off; I'm trying to sort this out logically. The national perception seems to be that our defense is Swiss cheese - is that true, and will it be true moving forward? If so, what got us to this point?

The obvious answer is no/limited Champ or Von. It's hard for me to comprehend that one pass-rusher and one DB can cause a team to drop that much... Hell, the 49ers lost Aldon Smith and they only dropped from 4 last year to 6 this year. I think there's got to be more to the story.

schematics: are we doing anything different? Has anyone noticed anything fundamentally unsound in what we are allowing? Have we tried to be more of a "bend-but-don't-break" style of D, allowing the short stuff but not getting burned over the top (Dallas game obvious exception)? The stats seem to bear that out, seeing how we are pretty damn close to average in td allowed/attempt yet near NFL worst in yards/attempt. JAX game is a good example here - 300 passing yards allowed, 0 passing TD.

small sample size: obviously, the big Dallas game really skewed the stats. If one recognizes that giving up 500 yards is not representative, you gotta believe that this D will improve, right? This is a "regression towards the mean" argument. of course, looking at the league, if we had allowed 200 less yards vs DAL, we'd still be 29th so not sure I buy it.

our offense is so dominant, teams have to move the ball by throwing it, and therefore counting metrics (i.e. total passing yards) aren't a big deal. In theory, that makes offenses one dimensional and should therefore improve our situation - in fact, we are allowing opposing QB's a passer rating of 87.8, damn near NFL average. What's weird here is that this should actually make it easier to run on us - draws, etc. Buy, we hold form allowing only 3.2 yards per carry, 2nd best in the league.

last year we had a sack on 8.5% of pass attempts. This year it's 6.3%. Is Von getting a sack every 2% of pass attempts?

just checked that - Von actually got a sack on 3.2% of pass attempts last year. I think it's probably fair to say that Von being back will push us back to one of the elite teams in terms of getting after the QB. It will be interesting to see what happens to our team D pass rankings.

Good thread. I chose the "missing Von..." option because it's probably (hopefully?) the biggest reason, although probably not the only reason. I'll be interested to see where this discussion goes. A few weeks ago several people (one in particular) in the thread linked below apparently didn't agree with me that there was a problem with the pass D...

Good thread. I chose the "missing Von..." option because it's probably (hopefully?) the biggest reason, although probably not the only reason. I'll be interested to see where this discussion goes. A few weeks ago several people (one in particular) in the thread linked below apparently didn't agree with me that there was a problem with the pass D...

just checked that - Von actually got a sack on 3.2% of pass attempts last year. I think it's probably fair to say that Von being back will push us back to one of the elite teams in terms of getting after the QB. It will be interesting to see what happens to our team D pass rankings.

So, he's going to increase his sack production by 160% without teams having to worry about blocking Doom- meaning he'll likely face more double teams on a regular basis?

So, he's going to increase his sack production by 160% without teams having to worry about blocking Doom- meaning he'll likely face more double teams on a regular basis?

not sure where your 160% comes from. I'm saying that if Von can get to the QB at the same rate that he did last year (in terms of sacks per pass attempt), and his sacks don't cannibalize his teammates (i.e. does a Von sack mean one less for Malik?), as a team we would be getting sacks at the same rate we did last year moving forward.

So, he's going to increase his sack production by 160% without teams having to worry about blocking Doom- meaning he'll likely face more double teams on a regular basis?

We haven't missed Dumervil one bit. Our other pass rushers are doing more than he would be doing for us right now. We just lack that dominating pass rusher that causes defenses to buckle. Or we were lacking it until recently.

We're missing some guys and haven't been able to build that chemistry. Also losing Dumervil, who applied more consistent pressure than Phillips, was another thing.

I also think teams are playing us differently. We spent a lot of time in base and nickel and built our defense around that all preseason. Given what people know they need to do to keep pace with Star Wars, they are playing us with four and even five wide. Fox mentioned two weeks ago that they were adequately prepared for that in his press conference following the Cowboys game. According to him we need to adjust and realize we are going to get their "two minute offense" possibly the entire game and the coaching staff will need to provide the team with more different looks out of our dime defense to make it more difficult.

We're missing some guys and haven't been able to build that chemistry. Also losing Dumervil, who applied more consistent pressure than Phillips, was another thing.

I also think teams are playing us differently. We spent a lot of time in base and nickel and built our defense around that all preseason. Given what people know they need to do to keep pace with Star Wars, they are playing us with four and even five wide. Fox mentioned two weeks ago that they were adequately prepared for that in his press conference following the Cowboys game. According to him we need to adjust and realize we are going to get their "two minute offense" possibly the entire game and the coaching staff will need to provide the team with more different looks out of our dime defense to make it more difficult.

Von definitely will help with the pass defense, though.

Almost all good points and on the money Kaylore, the only thing Im not so sure about is Doom being that much more consistent than Shaun Phillips in the same defense Phillips has had to play in so far.

Doom did well in his first few years as the main .. or only ... pass rusher for us but really excelled only when he was in the 3- 4 OLB spot.

Im not sure at all Doom would have been any better than Shaun so far this year without Von on the other side. Maybe his working in the scheme and with the rest of the defensive players in previous years would have given Elvis an edge on Phillips in these early games, but Shaun has done a very decent job without Von taking the pressure off of him and he has been a much better run defender so far.

With 5.5 sacks after only 6 games Shaun is on pace to eclipse all but Dooms best year as the 3-4 OLB for us with 17 sacks in 2009 and with Von back now could easily surpass Dooms best year as it is ...

Assuming he stays healthy and motivated as I expect he will with a chance to really shine again and get his first ring he could hit 16 to 18 sacks himself at this pace and with Vons help as well as be a significant improvement in run support over Doom.

Elvis may have done close to as good in sacks this year opposite Von but I'm not so sure he would have done as well as Shaun so far with no Von on the other side.

I love it. The Broncos have been missing their top 4 players on Defense at times during the last few games, while playing 2 of the top 4 scoring teams in the NFL and you have guys like TonyR saying "I told ya so".

Told people what exactly? That Bolden, Carter, and Robinson suck? That Wolfe shouldn't be playing every single snap at DE? That Nate Irving shouldn't be MIKE? No sh*t Sherlock.

Give it a rest. Can't wait to rub it in your face the rest of the year.

Second, why do you keep putting words in people's mouths? You can go read exactly what I said instead of making sh*t up (I'd be happy to link threads and posts for you if you'd like, just ask). I merely proved that our pass defense struggles weren't all about "garbage time", and you and a few others lost your minds at the suggestion. The depths of how wrong you were are now clear for all to see and now you're angry about it. Be angry at yourself, not me.

Almost all good points and on the money Kaylore, the only thing Im not so sure about is Doom being that much more consistent than Shaun Phillips in the same defense Phillips has had to play in so far.

Doom did well in his first few years as the main .. or only ... pass rusher for us but really excelled only when he was in the 3- 4 OLB spot.

Im not sure at all Doom would have been any better than Shaun so far this year without Von on the other side. Maybe his working in the scheme and with the rest of the defensive players in previous years would have given Elvis an edge on Phillips in these early games, but Shaun has done a very decent job without Von taking the pressure off of him and he has been a much better run defender so far.

With 5.5 sacks after only 6 games Shaun is on pace to eclipse all but Dooms best year as the 3-4 OLB for us with 17 sacks in 2009 and with Von back now could easily surpass Dooms best year as it is ...

Assuming he stays healthy and motivated as I expect he will with a chance to really shine again and get his first ring he could hit 16 to 18 sacks himself at this pace and with Vons help as well as be a significant improvement in run support over Doom.

Elvis may have done close to as good in sacks this year opposite Von but I'm not so sure he would have done as well as Shaun so far with no Von on the other side.

Well maybe not. I agree Phillips is better against the run, but Dumervil is younger. Regardless, we are fortunate the Broncos played well during Von's absence. Very curious to see how we play this weekend.

No Doom, no Von. Couple that with the fact that teams are having to heave the ball to keep pace with us.

Also, our D has seen 251 passing attempts (2nd most only to Philly). We're 3rd worst in yards per attempt, but I would think that could still be chalked up to us playing prevent D later in most of our games. There's an interesting stat called "Adjusted Yards per Attempt" for which we rank 8th worst in the league. You can find many good #'s here: http://www.pro-football-reference.co...s/2013/opp.htm

No Doom, no Von. Couple that with the fact that teams are having to heave the ball to keep pace with us.

Also, our D has seen 251 passing attempts (2nd most only to Philly). We're 3rd worst in yards per attempt, but I would think that could still be chalked up to us playing prevent D later in most of our games. There's an interesting stat called "Adjusted Yards per Attempt" for which we rank 8th worst in the league. You can find many good #'s here: http://www.pro-football-reference.co...s/2013/opp.htm

yup, I've spent most of this afternoon on pfr, trying to find the silver lining. I wanted to chalk it up to lots of yards because of lots of attempts, but like you noted, 3rd worst in yards/attempt isn't good. We were 5th best there last year, and 6th in AY/A.

no matter how you slice it, this pass D is WAY worse than it was last year.

No Doom, no Von. Couple that with the fact that teams are having to heave the ball to keep pace with us.

Also, our D has seen 251 passing attempts (2nd most only to Philly). We're 3rd worst in yards per attempt, but I would think that could still be chalked up to us playing prevent D later in most of our games. There's an interesting stat called "Adjusted Yards per Attempt" for which we rank 8th worst in the league. You can find many good #'s here: http://www.pro-football-reference.co...s/2013/opp.htm

Dang, I didn't realize just how bad Denver is in most every Defensive category (other than rushing). Even if you factor in some teams have only played 5 games, Denver still won't jump up much in defensive rankings.

We can't fairly say the impact of losing Doom is yet...we haven't seen the full D without him.

I'm of the assumption (hope) that Dumervil has been adequately replaced with Philips and a maturing Malik Jackson and Wolfe. We'll see though. Run D, which was the knock on Doom, seems to be equally good, so there's that.

If the Broncos focus on stopping the run first, they are basically daring the opponent's quarterback to outplay Manning. Yes, they will get some yardage through the air, but it's just a matter of time before a mistake is made.